NewWind Tree Turbine

[2N3055]

Yes I would love to have a wind turbine as well and might solar panels as it would take over when the sun goes in or at night and my inverter does already have a second set of input sockets with a diode on each set for separation. Wind is indeed used for remote applications in conjunction with solar. Here in the UK there are a number of luminous road signs that are powered from a solar panel and a wind turbine, but surprise, surprise and I really can't think why the rushing out just escapes me... They are using horizontal axis wind turbines about 20 cm in diameter not vertical axis wind turbines. It's not like vertical axis wind turbines are anything new we have all seen for many years the triple egg cup turbine used on wind speed sensors. How strange they not be using the same type of design to generate power for a luminous sign that does not require much power and to be fair is probably mostly powered by the solar panel. Vertical axis wind turbines don't seem to have much real application they just look slightly better as in this application. I'm not saying I would not use one as it's simplicity of installation is about it's only advantage from what I understand. But if you want to do any serious generation with a single unit you were go for a horizontal axis and this is something I would now consider myself rather than the vertical axis.

Simon, I actually had some projects I worked on regarding green energy in last 10 years.. I designed few interactive road sign signalization products on solar power, a electric vehicle charging station, and a pilot project for off the grid street lights.. Off the grid street lights pilot is powered by hybrid solar/wind gen. I used vertical  500W turbine and 100W solar panel, and must say wind is pretty much useless.. It contributed less than 2% of the total energy generated..  Problem with the wind is that it doesn't scale well (it is not linear) to smaller sizes, and needs to be put in a special place to work well.. In real life, it is much easier (and less expensive) to just slap on one more solar panel, and still save money..  Problem is, in real life you don't get to choose location.. It is given to you and then you have to design around it.

But for very low power electronics, it could be useful..

[Simon]

yes like i said vertical turbines wil have a niche application. But for larger scale generation they are a bit pointless. The whole point of this particular project is "for it to look nice" which is a niche I can accept it will be good for, they will get put in places a small horizontal turbine does not.

[Seekonk]

It would be interesting to see one large vertical turbine in the shape of a tree painted green.  Here in the states there are many cell phone towers made to look like trees to get over neighborhood objections.  Some look pretty good and some look like Charlie Browns Christmas tree.  There is even one in a forest that looks great, except that it is twice as tall as any tree around it.  Here in the Northeast US there have been numerous lawsuits to block installation of wind farms.  Something will have to be done to disguise these in order to get community acceptance.  I've tried wind and it has been a dud.  I can see every museum buying one of these, with government funds, and that would be a pretty large market in itself.

[Simon]

The problem with a single larger vertical axis wind turbine sitting on the ground is that once that things start going round it is going to have some force therefore it would be deemed to be dangerous to stupid members of the public who would walk into it. This is why I say they are only good for niche applications. Units the size of these are not big enough to cause any damage and their method of installation seeks to overcome aesthetic objections.

I'm afraid humanity is going to have to get used with the fact that it can't live in a Victorian landscape whilst living a 21st century lifestyle. If you don't want a wind turbine close to your home then I suggest you protest the by stop using electricity. Of course we do live in countries full of people who don't seem to grasp the fact that fossil fuel will one day run out and its use is causing changes to our climate which are so drastic that at some point the food we eat will no longer be able to grow in the environment and at a further point we ourselves will not survive. So we want to continue our current lifestyle without worrying about where the energy comes from. That is part of the gap that this project seeks to cover. If you have a space where you would perhaps put a tree put one of these, it looks like a tree and in your wildest dream will generate a whole load of energy. Those of us technically minded of course know that this is actually improbable to happen and they will just be an expensive art installation. I will be more interested in the individual generators themselves.

[Someone]

There is a power curve diagram up there in the topic that Dave found on their site... If you quote power as most manufacturers do, at 10 m/s , than you would call it cca 25W generator.. So to reach claimed 4.1kW, you would need 150 of those on a tree.. I didn't really count, but as "Someone" (it's username ) said, seems to be 60-70 installed on the trees they show.. So that would mean they overestimated they claims..

Moving the goalposts again? There is no wind speed which is universally used to rate the power output of an installation:
http://upriseenergy.com/blog/2012/9/12/capacity-factor-and-nameplate-rating-explained
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nameplate_capacity
Their claim of a 4100W nameplate/installed capacity is not overestimated, and not even the peak power it could generate (see the first link above). Their load factors to produce the claimed 2400kWh annually are within believable ranges and there is nothing suspicious about their figures at all.

[Red Squirrel]

I saw these too and did not figure you'd get more than a few watts per "leaf"  But if you actually can get the amount they state I could see this being viable in some applications.  Maybe not even in the tree configuration but maybe along a fence or what not.

Do you think those numbers make sense for the size though?  I see 500w turbines that appear to have blades over a meter long, so it seems odd these tiny ones can produce so much for their much smaller size.  I could see this being useful in addition to solar, as it could produce a bit at night, at very least to slow down the battery discharge to make it through the night without discharging them as far.

[Someone]

Do you think those numbers make sense for the size though?

They're probably bigger than you think, see the image below. For their size all the numbers add up, its just a matter of how much wind the location get.

[Lightages]

All technological issues aside, anything that Wolfe asshole endorses immediately gets written off as snake oil by me. Rightly or wrongly it is what I do. He is such a amoral con man that I see his face and/or name and I immediately close the page and disregard anything he touches.

[Red Squirrel]

Do you think those numbers make sense for the size though?

They're probably bigger than you think, see the image below. For their size all the numbers add up, its just a matter of how much wind the location get.

Wow much bigger than I thought.  I was expecting them to be maybe the size of a large cup of coffee or something.  The wattage they state makes more sense then. 

This is a project that I feel may actually be somewhat viable in certain settings if the numbers really do add up.   But like most of these type of projects it seems they never provide real world data.

[EEVblog]

Do you think those numbers make sense for the size though?

They're probably bigger than you think, see the image below. For their size all the numbers add up, its just a matter of how much wind the location get.

Wow, they are much bigger than I thought


I was going to do a video on this, and researched some local average wind data etc, but then realised it's actually quite and old story and crowd funder. So maybe not really worth the effort.

[Someone]

Do you think those numbers make sense for the size though?

They're probably bigger than you think, see the image below. For their size all the numbers add up, its just a matter of how much wind the location get.

Wow much bigger than I thought.  I was expecting them to be maybe the size of a large cup of coffee or something.  The wattage they state makes more sense then. 

This is a project that I feel may actually be somewhat viable in certain settings if the numbers really do add up.   But like most of these type of projects it seems they never provide real world data.

The only real world figure we need is a price, like with the solar roof tiles they may be less energy efficient than the best case ideal alternative but if the cost is lower from mass production then the economics will still be a winner.